


Courtly Love

by madwriteson



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26753260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madwriteson/pseuds/madwriteson
Summary: Reflections on how to love someone you aren't allowed to love that way.
Relationships: John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir
Kudos: 17





	Courtly Love

Courtly love was a concept that John Sheppard had never needed to make space for in his worldview. Love and desire had always been straightforward, commonplace things, complicated as all things were by his partners being people with their own desires and needs, but always something he could put words to. “This is my girlfriend,” he could say. “This is my wife, my ex, my friend with benefits.” All simple relationships with simple explanations for who they were to him, the physical and emotional intertwined and inseparable.

With Elizabeth Weir, he found, nothing was quite so simple.

Of course there was no physical side to their relationship. There wasn’t even a relationship, because if there were one, they would have to face down the ways in which it could not be.

But no matter where he was or what he was doing, she was the center around which his world revolved. Easier to bear, perhaps, when she was not at his side, when the weight of all the unsaid words between them did not hang there, thick in the air. Easier to bear when he was at her side and knew that she was as safe and secure as he could make her, though safety and security were so often impossible to find in this place.

And no simple way to say what she was to him, what he hoped he was to her, because the saying would bring it to an end.


End file.
